According to the USA TODAY, President Obama plans to up the national overtime threshold from $23,660 to $50,000 for salaried employees.

A proposed new rule governing overtime pay will mean bigger paychecks for up to 5 million workers, Obama administration officials said Tuesday.

The change “goes to the heart of what it means to be middle class in America,” said Labor Secretary Thomas Perez.

Business groups and congressional Republicans said the proposal would force employers to reduce overtime hours and perhaps cut the number of workers.

“Overtime expansion would drive up retailers’ payroll costs while limiting opportunities to move up into management,” said a statement from the National Retail Federation.

Cory Fritz, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said that “instead of working in a bipartisan way to streamline and modernize regulations,” the Obama administration is “proposing a new executive order that will limit opportunities and increase costs.”

I cannot demonstrate the sheer stupidity of this decision without detailing exactly how it will affect people like me.

I am a salaried retail manager who makes less than $50,000. My paychecks say 40 hours, but I’m expected to work 50 hours and often times I work more hours than that. Why? Because you cannot manage a business in 40 hours a week. At least, you cannot manage a business well in such few hours.

Salaries are only part of a managers pay. The rest of our money we make in bonuses that, depending on the company, can average anywhere from $1500 to $6,000 a quarter and another bonus for meeting annual goals. So if a salaried manager is paid $49,000 a year, but can earn anywhere from $7,500 to $30,000 in bonuses, than his actual pay is anywhere from $56,500 to $79,000 annually. Salaried managers work longer hours in order to ensure the efficiency of their businesses, to ensure profit and sales goals are met, and to analyze and reduce shrink and costs. The more hours a manager works and the more time they invest, the more they tend to get paid.

What President Obama is doing, however, will ensure that retail managers under the $50,000 threshold never get the opportunity to work more than 40 hours a week. Federal Regulations might change, but my contract with my company stays the same. I will still be required to meet sales and profit goals, maintain execution of store standards, reduce costs and expenses, all while working 40 to 60 hours less each month.

So not only will I never see any of this estimated “overtime” money, I will be prevented from spending the time I require to run my store to the highest levels of profitability.

Even if my company allowed me to work 50 hours a week and they were willing to pay my overtime, that would only amount to about another $5,000 a year, at most; but the threat of not allowing me to work that overtime could cost me, and people in similar jobs, anywhere from $7,500 to $30,000 a year. How anyone in my position could possibly celebrate Obama’s proposal is beyond my comprehension.

Unless they are not in it for the money, only desire their base salary, and more than anything, simply do not want to work more than 40 hours a week.

I’ve never seen anyone get ahead in this world working 40 hours a week. Have you?

Some might argue, however, that if it will really have that much of an impact on a companies profitability, why wouldn’t they just give all their salaried managers a raise to $50,001 annually? Then, instead of getting overtime pay, you get a nice fat raise that you see every week in your paychecks.

That’s fine and dandy, except that one of the most expensive costs in our stores is our stores’ managers! The company can’t change their budgets to accommodate increasing salaries in each of their stores without cutting those expenses somewhere else. So, let’s say they give salaried managers $5,000, $8,000, or even $10,000 dollar raises to get us above the overtime threshold, each of those managers will still be less likely to meet their budgets and receive their bonuses which will inevitably cost them far more in performance pay than they gain in their base salary increases.

So, PLEASE Mr. President, don’t help me. You are too stupid to help me and your good intentions will cost me, and hundreds of thousands of Americans just like me, a small fortune – and you will hurt our companies as well. The entire reason that our companies pay bonuses is because of how important profits are to our corporations! People won’t invest if you aren’t showing a profit. But profit, loss, investment, etc. these are concepts this President simply does not understand.

Congressman Brat, if you’re listening, could you please explain to the President how the economy works? He’s clueless!

6 Responses to “Mr. President: I Don’t Want Your “Help”!”

You need to find another job dude, one where you can have access to healthcare insurance. By your description, your job sucks. No health insurance, no overtime, low wages??? And by the way, if you do not want that overtime pay, then donate it to charity.

The are millions of salaried people who work many hours over 40 and do not get a bonus, or a nickle of overtime pay for those extra hours.

Have you noticed the latest jobs report, not too many of those around. If you believe the economic doofus called Obama can manipulate an economy by his cell phone or pen you are as clueless as he is. This guy was doing fine without President doofus. Why are you lefties so economically clueless? Please read Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson or Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics so you won’t be so clueless.

Does one need to read a book to tell them that Republican President Bush 43′ destroyed this country as we knew it? Does one need to read a book to to tell them that our economy is better off now than under Republican President Bush 43′? Does one need to read a book to tell them that Republican Govenor McDonnell, gave Virginia the largest tax increase in its history?

Advocates of the Nanny state are totally clueless of even basic economics, and have a simpletons notion that regulation is the answer. Central economic planning, redistribution worked so very well in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Latin America…….

Dr. Milton Friedman back in the 70’s detailed what happened in Singapore when capitalism was unleased. Income and standards of living exploded, setting the entire pacific rim economies on fire. No minimum wages, no overtime rules, just free people and hungry entrepreneurs seeking a better life. The lack of regulations imposed by well meaning government was according to a Nobel Prize winning economist the key to Singapore’s success. Hard work, reliance, willingness to take risk and the possibility of failure has been and will continue to be the hallmark of a growing healthy economy, as well as productive real growth in wages and salaries.

Politicians , always anxious to “buy votes” are the only ones who ignore the reality and or the truth. The useful idiots line up , drinking the falsehoods of easy answers. Whatever needs done to address the issue of stagnant wages does not include politicians dictating what private enterprise pays a free man willing to work,( or not) for whatever wage the marketplace places on their skills. It is when that free marketplace exchange between worker and employer is interfered with , things go awry.

Incentives to educate oneself, gaining skills that are of value and in demand in the marketplace are what provides opportunities to make more money.

Regulations that distort that formula only retard real solutions. If things were as simple as a President deciding what anyone should be paid, then why don’t we just argue for a minimum annual wage of …..$75,000 $100,000, with government mandated benefits, health insurance, paid sick leave, paid holidays, 35 hour caps on work week, retirement at age 50…….Didn’t they have this very system in Greece ? That seems to be working out well.

President Bush 43′ showed us in 2008 what happens when “capitalism was unleashed”, did he not?

Capitalism unleashed. You mention politicians buying votes? Well, when do we get to the part about corporations buying politicians?

When do we get to the part about $85 Billion a month in bailout money for Wall St., creatively call QE, necessary because “capitalism was unleashed”, as you say? Over a Trillion Dollars a year, year after year, shipped to Wall St..

$80 Billion a year for food stamps, $85 Billion a month to Wall St? “Captalism Unleased”

In most instances w/ this empty suited president it’s more about the executive part than the order part being that this is the most un-American, unlawful, corrupt, inexperienced, inept, & debt-laden first gay president ever.